Our Mission: FairVote advances systemic electoral reform to achieve a fully participatory and truly representative democracy that respects every vote and every voice in every election. We work toward these goals by providing advocates with innovative research and reform strategy. We promote ranked choice voting (“instant runoff”), a constitutionally protected right to vote, a national popular vote for president, and, most fundamentally, fair representation voting forms of proportional representation.

Blog and News

New from the Blog

It's time for pollsters to be more innovative in surveys of multi-candidate fields like the 2016 presidential nomination contest. A new Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey makes a good start in asking for second choices and reporting the totals for "pairings" of candidates. Doing so allow a simulation of ranked choice voting.

When it comes time to vote in the 2016 congressional primary elections, will you be allowed to vote in the primary of your choice? We’ve updated our analysis on every state’s rules for its primary elections: open primaries, closed primaries, “semi-closed” primaries, and the handful of states that do something else entirely.

Fixing Gerrymandering. In a July 2 article on Salon, Drew Spencer and Rob Richie called for fair representation voting as the fundamental fix to gerrymandering. On July 8, Richie was a guest on Newmax’s MidPoint and discussed FairVote's analysis of the Arizona redistricting Supreme Court ruling.

New report exposes broken democracy. On June 12, FairVote released Decided Dozen, a new report focusing on 12 states where legislative control and most individual seats are never in doubt.

Professor explores ranked choice voting for Boston elections. James Sutherland, of Northeastern University, champions ranked choice voting for Boston mayoral and city council elections. “Instant runoff voting elections,” Sutherland writes, “produces a democracy which matches the philosophy of the modern voter.”.

Research

In debating options for reforming presidential elections in the United States, the most promising alternative to the status quo is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). But even though we use popular vote elections to select every member of Congress and all 50 governors, some NPV skeptics warn that its adoption would have a partisan impact on presidential elections. They fear that Democrats could increase their national vote totals by focusing resources on major metropolitan areas, while Republicans could achieve similar gains only by spreading their resources across more geographically dispersed, non-urban areas. This report challenges this argument in three ways.

States have a constitutional obligation to decide how they will allocate their electoral votes during presidential elections. Almost all states currently use statewide, winner-take-all rules, which gives all of the state's votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote. But some states have considered alternative methods, such as the whole number proportional system and the congressional district system. We look at the effect these systems would have on presidential elections. Neither system promotes majority rule, increases competitiveness nationwide, or ensures voter equality.

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Reform 2020 is FairVote's vision for a democracy that truly represents American diversity.

Representation 2020 works to raise awareness of the under-representation of women in elected office, to strengthen coalitions that are supportive of measures to increase women's representation, and to highlight the often-overlooked structural barriers to achieving gender parity in American elections.

Promote Our Vote works with organizations, campuses, and cities to advance pro-suffrage practices and policies.

Fair Sports Rulesidentifies ways to improve the legitimacy, transparency, and fairness of competition structures in sports.